Such, by all first-hand accounts, pruned and trimmed into legibility, were these famous entertainments—a medley of grandeur and grotesqueness which could hardly have been matched outside Turkey. Sir John had postponed his journey in order to witness this grandeur. But, having received no invitation (only envoys from tributary States had that expensive honour) he felt compelled by his dignity to hold aloof, and never saw anything. The other Englishmen, however, were not so punctilious. They mixed with the mob which, on foot or on horseback, filled the plain and was kept in disorder by a body of policemen armed with oil-smeared sheep-skins. Wherever they saw the crowd pressing most, they rushed to disperse it by laying about them with their skins. To save their holiday garments from greasy defilement, the crowd surged this way and that, in terrible confusion, those on foot treading on each other’s heels, those on horseback being flung by their stampeding steeds one over another in a hundred different directions. “There never was such a dance of brave horses seen as at that place,” declares our Treasurer; adding, with an engaging candour, “to tell you the truth, I had small joy in this diversion; and, however we endeavoured all that was possible to procure horses that were temperate, yet I could not help making one in the dance, and that not without much hazard, which not a little retrench’d my enjoyments, till I found out the way to leave my horse at a good distance from me.”[100]
Our Chaplain had to pay much more dearly for his insatiable curiosity: “My horse snorted and trembled, so I suspected no good, yet I was resolved to stay and see all. Just as the fireworkes began, he and many other horses by ran mad and rising up fell on his hams, then, trembling, on his side; [he] fairly layd [me] along [the ground] and ran away as if the Divel had drove him. I was getting up, but seeing many, many mad Jades coming, I fell flat on my face, and committed the event to God.” Thus the Rev. John lay prostrate on the broad Thracian plain that dreadful night, while crazy stallions with cocked ears and flying manes dashed about, snorting, squealing, thundering this way and that. The reverend gentleman listened to the drumming of their hoofs with a horror which his dislike of death rendered agonising. His terror grew as the sound of those irresponsible, irreverent hoofs drew nearer. He heard the frantic animals as they went by, rocking, leaping, plunging, slipping, recovering themselves within the ever-narrowing circle of which he formed the unhappy centre. Their iron shoes rang in his ears—an odious knell. He could do nothing but crouch, stupefied, against the Thracian plain. He had just enough initiative left to pray to God that He might save a future Master of Christ’s College, Cambridge, from a premature demolition under infidel hoofs. Never before, and never after, did the Rev. John Covel feel so paralysed or so pious. But God did not forsake him: “His name be ever praised! for though I dare sware at least 100 horse and people came over me, I got not the least harm imaginable in the world.”[101]
After this miraculous escape, our Chaplain hastened to attach himself to the Ambassador of Ragusa, “a lusty, gallant fellow,” who, as the representative of a tributary State, had the privilege of participating in the celebrations and making presents. Under this minor Excellency’s wing, he was able to go everywhere, to stare at everybody, to pry into everything, to glut himself on pomp, without the least danger. They had always a Janissary or two who looked after them and treated them to sherbet. Thus attended, they strutted about as they liked, sat on quilts, and lolled on cushions near the Grand Vizir’s own tent—nay, several times the Rev. John found himself near to the Grand Signor himself: once he actually stood within five yards of his Majesty, all the time his Majesty prayed! How eagerly he noted everything, how glibly he gossiped afterwards to his companions, how keenly he enjoyed their envy! And the friends at home—those poor untravelled Fellows in Cambridge: think of their wonder and awe as they perused his immense, discursive epistles from Adrianople—messages from fairyland, sent to reveal to them the existence of a strange, wondrous world, beyond the humdrum of their drab academic routine. The Rev. John could hear himself quoted in every Combination Room as one versed in all the secrets of the mysterious East. Verily our Chaplain had much to praise God for.
How did the Turks view the intrusion of these unbidden and inquisitive unbelievers? Covel speaks with rapture of the “strange prodigious civility all Franks found everywhere at these festivals.” The Turks, he says, “took the greatest pride that we should see and (at least seem to) admire everything.” He gives examples from his own experience. He had been taken twenty times to see the sights, while the Turks themselves were being “huncht away.” He had been many times “very, very near the G. Signor himself (sometimes ½ an hour together, as long as I pleased), with my hat and in my hair, both which they hate as the Divel.” He had walked right through the city, once or twice, “al alone,” in the midst of great Moslem multitudes, and “never met the least affront in the world, but rather extraordinary kindnesse.”[102] No one who knows Covel’s writings can doubt that he believed what he said. Only he failed to make allowance for the privileged position he occupied in Turkish eyes, first, as the guest of their Ragusan guest, and, secondly, as a priest; the Turks had unbounded respect for all religious ministers quite irrespective of their creed. North’s evidence, as always, is less uncritical. The Turks, he tells us, incurious themselves, did not suffer curiosity in others gladly, and were “apt to beat a man that pretends to it. They look upon those idlenesses and impertinences (as at best they account them) with a sinister eye; and always suspect mischief at the bottom, though they do not discern it.”[103] In other words, strangers were tolerated as long as they did not make themselves conspicuous. Once our Treasurer had the misfortune to draw attention to himself; and never forgot the result.
The occasion was an acrobatic performance of extraordinary interest: a rope-dancer sliding down from a lofty tower. North, for whom feats of skill possessed a peculiar fascination, thought to time him by his watch. As he stood counting the seconds, the rope broke, and down came the dancer. He heard the Turks around him asking one another how the accident had happened; then he heard some one say that he believed “that fellow,” pointing to our Treasurer, was the cause of it: he had seen him hold something in his hand and mutter over it. North, well acquainted with the Turkish fear of witchcraft, and also with the summary methods of Turkish mobs, did not wait to hear more, but slank away as fast as he could. That was the only way: the Frank who did not like being beaten should slink away from an excited Turkish crowd. With many of our merchants this habit of slinking endured after their return home: the sight of a mere church beadle made them think of a Turkish chaoush.[104] Modern tourists who fill their books with scornful comments on the servile attitude of Greeks and Armenians towards the Turk would do well to remember their own ancestors.
While all this went on, what was Sir John doing?
It would argue a profound misconception of Sir John’s character to suppose that, because he had been told that no business could be transacted until the feasts were over, he kept quiet. Much otherwise was the fact. His Dragomans, at his behest, seized every opportunity to come to speech with either the Kehayah or the Rais Effendi and to worry these worthies away from thoughts of mirth and sprightliness. The Ambassador himself paid several visits to the Kehayah in person. To quote his own words: “I attempt all wayes I can thinke of, that since I could not have Audience till the Feasts were done, in the mean time my Capitulations may goe forward.”[105]
We will look into these activities and try to set them forth as briefly as we can.